Los cárteles no existen: narcotráfico y cultura en México [Cartels don’t exist: drug trafficking and culture in Mexico]* (Barcelona: Malpaso, 2018) by Oswaldo Zavala is a deliberately provocative book with a clear central thesis: cartels exist discursively and have been rhetorically constructed thanks to powerful interests, but do not exist as they are popularly understood…
Category: Mexican Literature
Sea Birds, Liverpool, Clipperton and the Mexican Revolution
:A recent art piece on the waterfront in Liverpool reminded me of the different possible approaches and modes of reflecting on a place and its inhabitants. This bird is a blue-legged Masked Booby who are primarily found on Clipperton, a small atoll in the Pacific Ocean. I have just finished editing a chapter on two…
Central American Children and the Mexico-US border: Learn More
The uproar surrounding the detention of children at the Mexican-US border has brought attention to the migration of Central Americans to the US. The majority are from what is called the Northern Triangle – Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala – and are seeking asylum because of increased violence in their home nations. Many of these…
Vicente Leñero, the scriptwriter a brief reflection
Since his death on the 3rd of December 2014, the novelist, dramatist, journalist, and scriptwriter, Vicente Leñero, has received considerable attention including this reflection by the novelist Ana García Bergua and this other homage from his daughter, Estela Leñero Franco. Recently, when writing two separate chapters, one about literary adaptation in Mexico and another about the Mexican director…
Los de abajo Commemoration in Los Angeles
On the 15th and 16th of May I’ll be a featured speaker in a second conference commemorating the 100 year anniversary of the publication of Mariano Azuela’s novela de la Revolución, Los de abajo. Click herefor more information. My paper,”A Question of Taste: the Cinematic Adaptations of Los de Abajo“, considers the two films adaptations, the first in…
An Introduction to Elena Poniatowska in Liverpool April 18 2015
The following was my introduction to Elena Poniatowska at City Hall. 2015 will see a series of events related to Mexico and the United Kingdom. It is an honour to welcome Elena Poniatowska to Liverpool who has just been at the London Book Fair. Of course, she is here in Liverpool, now because of her…
The Politics of Being a Writer in Mexico: Ayotzinapa
This poem has been circulating amongst my friends and followers on social media in the last day. It draws attention to the power of writing and the writer’s role as public intellectual in Mexico. Huerta’s intervention is an important tool in the building of transnational solidarity and a means of reaching a wide audience where news…
A brief introduction to Jean Franco
At the Latin American Studies Association last year in Washington I met Jean Franco. Born in Manchester, she was a pioneering scholar who has become one of the foremost cultural theorists in Latin American Studies. She has written on multiple literary forms (poetry, short story, testimonio, novels, etc), television, journalistic writing and multiple other forms…